ART ARKS

Richard Tuttle at Tate Modern

Richard Tuttle once talked to me about the power of force and resistance. The way he put it was that the closer you got to complete blackness, the more it became all about white. That the more you talked about hope, the more it was about despair. Ultimately the message was all about balance. Ultimately the message was: don't overcompensate.

I tend to overcompensate sometimes. If there is no explanation, I error on the side of over explaining. If there is no appreciation, I error on the side of over appreciation. I can't risk more of the less.

Richard Tuttle at Tate Modern

I live in New England. The seat of less is more. There is no art here. Which might help to explain places like MASS MoCA and the ICA. Bigger and bigger places for art that make people smaller and smaller.

ICA in Boston

They are this huge overcompensation. Huge. They shout from the inside of their fortresses, "even if you don't care about art, well we do!" And the region just shouts back louder: "we don't care." In which case Noah decides that "we are going to need a bigger boat" and they build it. And these arks just sit alone in the landscape.

Which was why I was surprised when some museum people that visited Bow Street recently to see Nina Nielsen's paintings kept remarking how much they liked it. Really liked it. A funky little low ceilinged guerrilla theater of a gallery in a little tear-down of a shack on a rural road. Apparently they were relieved to be able to be intimate with art; exhausted by their own overcompensation. Funny.

Addison Parks, Bow Street

bow street

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